Business park changes won’t occur quickly
Measures to attract restaurants, housing are part of a process.
KETTERING — Plans for new housing and restaurants at Miami Valley Research Park aren’t expected to come soon after the city’s approval of measures allowing those uses.
Kettering City Manager Mark Schwieterman said it will take months for the research park’s oversight board to address “covenants and restrictions” that will require amending, while a developer interested in building a 300-unit apartment complex said it is a “potential 2022 project.”
“This is a first step in the process,” Schwieterman said after Kettering City Council voted 5-0 last week on measures to expand uses at the 1,250-acre property and Kettering Business Park to invite more economic development.
The approved changes to the city’s comprehensive plan and zoning code take effect later this month. They will expand land uses on large tracts on a limited basis to adapt to changing trends that attract a wider variety of industries and jobs, city officials have said.
The changes will permit “mixed use support retail and high-density residential uses,” Schwieterman said.
They would also allow multiunit residential and restaurants “as conditionally permitted uses,” which requires a longer process and more scrutiny, he said.
A proposal now in the design stage involves an apartment complex on about 28 acres in research park at the corner of Research Park Boulevard and County Line near the Beavercreek corporation line.
Cleveland-based Industrial Commercial Properties is looking to build multifamily housing at MVRP, where it owns about 50 acres.
Kettering passing the changes is “a major first step … and we’re excited about the possibility” of the housing project, ICP executive Dean Miller told the Dayton Daily News last week.
“We are in the process of a hooking up with a partner who would work with us to develop the residential portion” and “get into the design and approval process more specifically with the city,” he said.
The zoning changes would add two standards, Kettering Planning and Development Director Tom Robillard has said:
■ Residential developments be on lots of at least 10 acres and include at least 200 units.
■ Restaurant developments be on lots of at least 10 acres and include at least 20,000 square feet of restaurant use.
Current development trends are “pushing for onsite or close proximity (such) as supportive retail and restaurants and higher-density housing,” Robillard has said.